Super Mario 64 hack adds multiplayer

If you owned a Nintendo 64 back in the mid ’90s there was one game you had to have and probably played through repeatedly. That game was Super Mario 64. To this day it remains my all time favorite Mario game.

Super Mario 64 was a purely single-player experience, but more than 16 years after its release someone has managed to add a two-player option to the game. That someone goes by the name of Skelux, and he’s an experienced hacker of a number of Mario games.

The multiplayer option turns Super Mario 64 into a two-player co-op game. But in order to play it you are going to require an N64 emulator and a copy of the game. This isn’t something you’ll ever see running on the actual N64 hardware.

As the video above demonstrates, co-op works surprisingly well with the camera panning back and responding as intended to keep the two players in view at all times. According to Skelux it works because Nintendo had originally planned to include co-op as an option in the game, but ended up shipping the cartridges without it. This hack unlocks the entirety of the game as a co-op experience.

If co-op Super Mario 64 doesn’t sound like a great idea you may want to check out Skelux’s other project called Super Mario Star Road. It’s a full game modification that adds 120 stars, over 30 new areas to explore, and a number of new objects for Mario to interact with. You can see it in action in the video below: